by Phyllis Green
Girl, Drowning
Ophelia, John Everett Millais, 1851/1852
What does he know
about the pathology
of a heart in a drowning girl
whose red hair radiates
like polysiphonia?
He once saw the body
of a lovely suicide
who had jumped
from the Bridge of Sighs
into the River Thames.
What does he know
about this strange, quiet
girl who poses in a tin
bath of brackish city water
from a suicide’s lungs?
She floats, transfixed,
like a statue of ice
gilded in silver and frost,
the oil lamps extinguished,
the water winter-cold.
What does he know
about a girl’s thoughts before
drowning? To accept fate
and sing the final notes
that will die between her lips?
The girl will look at herself
horrified, fascinated, as if
staring into a crystal ball
from which death emerges,
a blazing scarlet poppy.
Dana Knott’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Bitter Oleander, Emrys Journal, Parhelion, Ethel Zine, and Rejection Letters. Currently, she works as an academic library director in Ohio. Twitter: @dana_a_knott.
Phyllis Green’s art has appeared in ArLiJo 123. the Revolution (relaunch), Earth and Altar, ThereAfter, Superpresent (both spring and summer 2021), Novus, New Plains Review, and soon in I 70 Review. Phyllis is also the author of 16 books for young people.